It has, therefore, been proposed that sleep would be facilitated when brain temperature exceeds a threshold level (McGinty and Szymusiak, 1990). Experimental warming of the POAH induces a similar increase in this firing rate, and ultimately facilitates sleep (McGinty and Szymusiak, 1990 Alam et al., 1995 McGinty and Szymusiak, 2001). A subpopulation of warm-sensitive POAH neurons spontaneously increases its firing rate at sleep onset. One source of input affecting activity of the POAH is its local brain temperature, which modulates the firing rate of thermosensitive neurons. The site at which sleep regulation is likely to be linked with body temperature is the preoptic area/anterior hypothalamus (POAH), which is the major thermoregulatory centre of the mammalian brain and a key structure in arousal state control. These findings suggest that sleep-regulating systems are regulated in parallel with the circadian variation in body temperature, or may even be affected directly by it. Results confirm that the ability to initiate and maintain sleep is maximal during the phase of lower CBT (Dijk and Czeisler, 1995 Lack and Lushington, 1996 Shochat et al., 1997 Kubota et al., 2002). Experimental protocols have been designed to desynchronize the sleep and temperature rhythms. Habitual sleep onset closely follows the maximal rate of decline in CBT during the evening (Murphy and Campbell, 1997) and the probability of waking increases during the early morning rise in temperature. The major sleep period occurs during the trough of the circadian rhythm of core body temperature (CBT).
#Skin deep oxford al skin
In this report, we investigate a novel non-pharmacological approach to improve sleep by maintaining skin temperature within a narrow comfortable range. Non-pharmacological interventions are of value in the management of age-related sleep complaints, since they may be at least as effective as hypnotics and lack the adverse effects that occur with chronic use (Sivertsen et al., 2006). Nocturnal awakenings occur more frequently, especially in the morning, and the time spent in slow wave sleep decreases. With advancing age, an increasing number of people complain about their sleep quality (Foley et al., 1995 Kryger et al., 2004). Insomnia, sleep, ageing, temperature manipulation, thermoregulation, electroencephalography Introduction The results indicate that subtle feedback control of in-bed temperature through very mild manipulations could have strong clinical relevance in the management of disturbed sleep especially in the elderly, who have an attenuated behavioural response to suboptimal environmental temperature, which may hamper them from taking appropriate action to optimize their bed temperature. EEG frequency spectra showed enhancement of low-frequency cortical oscillations. Therefore, skin warming strongly improved the two most typical age-related sleep problems a decreased slow wave sleep and an increased risk of early morning awakening. Elderly subjects showed such a pronounced sensitivity, that the induced 0.4 ☌ increase in skin temperature was sufficient to almost double the proportion of nocturnal slow wave sleep and to decrease the probability of early morning awakening from 0.58 to 0.04. By employing a thermosuit to control skin temperature during nocturnal sleep, we demonstrate that induction of a mere 0.4 ☌ increase in skin temperature, whilst not altering core temperature, suppresses nocturnal wakefulness ( P <0.001) and shifts sleep to deeper stages ( P <0.001) in young and, especially, in elderly healthy and insomniac participants. Since in animal and human studies skin warming has been found to increase neuronal activity in brain areas that are critically involved in sleep regulation, we investigated whether subtle skin temperature manipulations could improve human sleep.
The available treatments for sleep disturbance have their limitations, so we have adopted a different approach to the improvement of sleep. With ageing, an increasingly disturbed sleep is reported as a significant complaint affecting the health and well-being of many people.